FACIAL ANATOMY FROM ZSKETCH BY TY SHELTON CH4

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Alright, we've now got a ZSketched skull! Its time to sculpt this bad boy!

If you have not done so already, its a good idea to make sure that you save your ZTool. To do this, go to the 'Tool' palette, click the 'Save As' button and save the file with a new name.

Now we are ready to convert the ZSketch skull into a Unified Skin that we can sculpt on. Go to the tab labeled 'Unified Skin', located in the 'Tool' palette. Click the tab once to expand the Unified Skin sub palette.

Leaving all of the settings at their current, default values, go ahead and click the 'Preview' button. ZBrush will generate an exact preview of what the Unified Skin would look like if created with the current settings.

For my skull, the default settings work great.

Don't get discouraged if your skull is reacting a bit differently while creating the Unified Skin. The results will vary with every model so feel free to play with different settings until you find what works best for you.

When you are you satisfied with your preview, go ahead and click the 'Make Unified Skin' button.

The new mesh will be created and automatically stored (not saved) up in the 'Tool' palette.

Select the new mesh and draw it onto the canvas. Make sure you are in «edit mode». And finally, hit 'x' on your keyboard in order to turn on symmetry in the x axis.

Now its time for some good old fashion sculpting!

The 'mPolish' brush (m is for medium) is fantastic for smoothing and shaping the large surface areas like the top of the skull. I also use a lot of the 'ClayTubes' brush to help quickly refine areas like the eye and nasal cavities, the cheek bones, jaw, etc. As always, it is also a good idea to tidy up your work with the smooth brushes.

As you are sculpting the skull, pay attention to which areas have already started to shape up well from the ZSketch process and strive to keep all that hard work intact.

Don't forget to constantly use solid reference material as you work.

We now have a roughly finished skull that can be used as a base for building the rest of the facial anatomy!

Once again, make sure that you save out your ZTool with a new file name!

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FACIAL ANATOMY FROM ZSKETCH BY TY SHELTON CH3

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At this point, the skull is really beginning to take shape. It should start to become very obvious as to which areas are coming together well and which areas still need a bit of work.

Once you are satisfied with the overall shape, go ahead and begin adding in a bit of detail. This should mainly consist of single ZSketch strokes that represent things like the teeth, the anterior nasal spine at the base of the nasal cavity, the mastoid process behind the ear cavity, etc.

As we near the completion of the ZSketch, make sure you fill in all of the remaining holes on the skull, including the

entire underside as well as the backside of the jaw bone.

Now, go back to the ZSketch sub palette and click the 'Optimize' button. This will clear out all of the ZSketch spheres that have been completely covered over by other ZSketch strokes and are no longer playing a role in the visible shape of the object.

Finally, turn on the button labeled 'PolyF', located just to the right hand side of your canvas.

You will notice that ZBrush has automatically created a «polygroup» for every one of the individual ZSketch strokes.

Though this can be extremely helpful in many situations, we can go ahead and just group them all together in one single polygroup for now. To do this, go to the tab labeled 'Polygroups', located in the 'Tool' palette. Click the tab once to expand the Polygroups sub palette and select 'Group Visible'.

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FACIAL ANATOMY FROM ZSKETCH BY TY SHELTON CH2

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Now that we've got a nice start on the front, its a good time to ZSketch the actual eye cavities. Position the model so you

can clearly see the back of the eye cavity placeholder spheres.

Using the 'Sketch 2' brush, lay down both a horizontal stroke and a vertical stroke along the back surface of the eye cav- ity placeholder spheres

Now, rotate back to the front and delete the eye cavity placeholder spheres by holding down the 'Alt' key and simply clicking on one of them. If you do not see them disappear immediately, you may need to rotate your camera a bit in order for the changes to update on the canvas.

Switch back to the 'Sketch 1' brush and begin filling in the gaps until you have two full eye cavities. Use the 'PushPull' brush to help round out the final shape.

Alright, this skull needs a jaw bone! Once again, select the 'Armature' brush and start to rough in the basic shape of the jaw.

Using all of the previous ZSketching techniques, fill in the volume of the jaw.

Continue on to creating the back of the skull.

Many times, it is beneficial to use a bigger brush size for creating larger shapes, like the back of a skull. You will definitely end up with a cleaner mesh for sculpting if the ZSketch is not riddled with too many unnecessary strokes.

However, remember that we will be refining all these shapes when we do sculpt them so don't get bogged down or discouraged in trying to create that one perfect ZSketch stroke that is going to represent the entire back half of the skull.

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